If you're hung over from drinking the blues away on Inauguration Day, bad news: It's time to open another beer. New numbers on the 40th anniversary of Roe:

According to the poll, 54 percent of adults say that abortion should be legal either always or most of the time, while a combined 44 percent said it should be illegal  either with or without exceptions...

In addition, a whopping 70 percent of Americans oppose the Roe v. Wade decision from being overturned, including 57 percent who feel strongly about this...

By comparison, just 24 percent now want the Roe v. Wade decision overturned, including 21 percent who feel strongly about this position.

Much of this change, the NBC/WSJ pollsters say, is coming from African Americans, Latinos and women without college degrees --- all of whom increasingly oppose the Supreme Court decision from being overturned.

Before today the highest number NBC/WSJ had recorded for keeping abortion legal in all or most cases was 49 percent in 2008. When you drill down into that data, you find that the number who want abortion legal in all cases — no exceptions, presumably not even for late term — is 31 percent, which is also a new high. Say this for Obama’s new coalition — they elected the right guy.

As for overturning Roe, despite the sturm and drang of Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Americans have never been keen on doing so. Pew’s recent poll on abortion found 63 percent opposed to the idea; in 1992, the number was 60 percent. NBC/WSJ sees a bit more movement over time but support for the status quo has been constant through the years in their data too:

Why the recent uptick? NBC’s pollsters speculate it's partly a backlash to the Akin/Mourdock rape comments last year, but I don’t know. My sense is that backlashes like that tend to burn out fairly quickly. Obama won and Akin and Mourdock both lost, so the “threat” of a post-Roe world has passed for abortion supporters. I think the likelier explanation, as noted in the excerpt, is changing demographics. Pew published a set of polls a few weeks after the election showing that the 18-to-29 group that got Obama reelected was also the age demographic most supportive of keeping abortion legal in all or most cases. They were also far more likely — 14 points more likely — than any other age group to say that government should do more than that government is doing too much. Imagine their surprise when they find out America can’t pay for the government it has right now.

Now that you’ve digested those numbers, try to digest this one. Exit question: Do these numbers augur the eventual end of SCOTUS confirmation fights over Roe? A newly elected Republican president would be caught between social conservatives in his base, who want the decision overturned, and pretty much the entire rest of the electorate, which doesn’t. Makes me wonder if GOP candidates won’t start veering away from the idea of getting rid of Roe via new appointments and pushing the idea of a Human Life Amendment instead. They could sell it is a true democratic solution, the way the Founders intended, knowing all the while that it hasn’t a prayer of passing.

Update: Almost forgot: If you believe Pew, a majority of the 18-to-29 group that’s now steering the ship of state and that strongly opposes overturning Roe doesn’t know which issue Roe v. Wade actually dealt with.

This last election was gift-wrapped for the GOP according to all the polls. Two things went wrong (abortion and fraud) and it isn’t possible to say which was the more major. But given that the three GOP senate candidates (Allen, Mourdock, and Atkin) who made any sort of an issue about abortion all got killed, the GOP has no other safe assumption than that it needs to leave the abortion issue alone.

Given the election results last November, this is hardly surprising. Can we PLEASE dispense with the fiction that this is still “a center-right nation”. The current occupant of the WH is a dedicated hard Leftist along the same lines as Hugo Chavez. A center-right nation wouldn’t elect such a person dog catcher let alone anything else.

At best you could make it a state’s right case. At *best*. And a few might actually ban it. A national ban will never EVER happen. It’s going to start costing more and more elections. I don’t like abortion, but if you gotta make a fight out of it, I say move to a country that bans it or try to make it a state thing.

I think the odds of it being even up to any state in the next 100 years is 5% or less and shrinking all the time.

I totally agree. Not the nation I knew growing up. It has become a nightmare. I hardly recognize this country anymore. And we are no longer a superpower anymore as well. PLEASE let’s end that fiction as well.

Morally bankrupt. The culture is an open-sewer. And the government/media complex has turned the country into a one-party statist entity, ruling a population of dependent serfs. Everything that used to be defined as good and virtuous are now deemed evil, and everything that used to be defined as evil is now praised and celebrated.

It’s quite a thing to behold. Especially for those of us that have memories and knowledge of the greatness that was this country.

The timing of the release of this poll is not mere happenstance. The 40th anniversary of Roe vs Wade and the annual March for Life in Washington on January 25th will be large and enthusiastic. The MSM propaganda in the form of a poll is intended to marginalize those who believe life begins at conception and should be protected.

How was it gifted wrapped with Romney as the candidate, who was nearly identical to obama on social issues.
Well, you should know on most items of concern to conservatives.
It should have been gifted wrapped if the Republicans had not run a liberal.

20
posted on 01/22/2013 8:43:48 AM PST
by svcw
(Why is one cell on another planet considered life, and in the womb it is not.)

What percentage of Americans supported the institution of slavery, with the remark “don’t personally want one but...”.

There is right. There is wrong. There is no “the public prefers...”.

Why disguise the issue of WHEN LIFE BEGINS since scientists are so damned excited about discovering how LIFE BEGAN many millions of years ago? They have observable data for conception to crying baby. They deny the evidence.

As bad as Romney was, Allen, Mourdock and Atkins were worse. Not because they were liberals, just the opposite. They were professed conservatives who expressed views on abortion which were so bizarre that they set the pro-life movement back substantially.

I found that actually to be that most amusing.
When talking to a liberal, they will list the ever so important social issues that are the reason their vote goes to obama, and when you point out what you just ran down were Romney’s stated political positions, they look at you like you have lobsters crawling out of your ears.

And the most annoying which appears to be happening is the GOPe is is looking for an even more liberal than before candidate, by systematically discrediting actual conservatives.

The Republican Party is dead, it’s time for a new party.

30
posted on 01/22/2013 8:54:50 AM PST
by svcw
(Why is one cell on another planet considered life, and in the womb it is not.)

I think the proper approach to this needs to be outside of pursuits to change the law. The proper approach (i.e. the most pragmatic and likely to have results in the shortest time) is to try to change hearts. Part of this has to be via education. If people really knew what mid and late-term abortion, or partial birth abortion truly was, I have to believe most would be appalled and want them stopped. It's really important to get this information in front of people, even if it is characterized by the left as propaganda (which it clearly isn't).

The other part of this has to be, in my opinion, strong efforts to characterize those who use abortion as a means of birth control as highly irresponsible and selfish, instead of as victims - which is how the MSM and progressives (including Obama) characterize them. Just like Holder's comment about making gun ownership ‘uncool’, like ‘smokers herded together outside’, we need to characterize this kind of selfish and irresponsible lifestyle for what it is. You have to start somewhere, and so I would focus on those who have had recurrent abortions and use it as a means of birth control.

Hard to believe we’ve gone from a 4% illegitimate birth rate to over 40% in my lifetime. And the 4% was BEFORE RoeWade, when abortions were not commonly available. So abortion has not solved unplanned pregnancy. Rather the new secular morality which espouses both abortion and sexual ‘liberation’ has led to a society where nearly half of all children are born out of wedlock, raised by a single mother on government support.

How exactly will society function when half the population was raised in this manner; without work ethic, dependent on government handouts, and without a father for moral guidance? Will the other half work twice as hard to support these crime prone vagabonds through redistributive taxation? And why should we be surprised when these morally bankrupt government dependents vote for the welfare king, Barack I?

God help our children, because the United States as we know it has ceased to exist.

35
posted on 01/22/2013 8:59:57 AM PST
by LucianOfSamasota
(Tanstaafl - its not just for breakfast anymore...)

I used to worry about the commies landing here or the Ruskies blowing us off the map. Now I don’t worry one bit because we have gotten to the point where we are morally at least as bad as they are or perhaps in some cases even worse.

I was watching The Rifleman on old rerun TV the other evening....pointed out to my wife, could you imagine a show with as moralistic a message as that show had that it would even be allowed into production today! Just trying to find a lead actor who could pull off that role would be a chore.

I dunno what else to tell you. It’s never going to be illegal again. I mean, you can hope it will be, but I think everyone knows it can be at best left to states. And even that will be nearly impossible.

So what? Obama just eliminated the “right to privacy” between a doctor and patient with the stroke of a pen. His Executive Actions, which were applauded by the pro-murder cult members, overturned Roe!\

Now that we no longer have a “right to privacy” between a doctor and patient, and now that we also have the legal means to set up a 15 member board to decide what “procedures” are allowed, then it is easy to no longer allow abortions and to then prosecute any participant in that disallowed procedure!

They have made the state all powerful, so we might as well use their tools against them.

First is that Akun and Murdoch really didn’t address abortion it was comments about rape. That said they can take as much credit for this poll as any hag on Emily’s list. Their misogynistic and factually untrue statements were used against us. They gave the enemy the rope.

For it to be legalized it would have to be more popular than ever with a more conservative government than we had during Bush/GOP congress. I don’t see that combination happening again much, and if so just barely.

Honestly, if it were one of my absolute issues that I couldn’t live around, I’d certainly leave over this one. It’s not going to change anytime soon. I think everyone knows that.

the GOP has no other safe assumption than that it needs to leave the abortion issue alone.

Can we really do that though? Where does it end? Imagine if the GOP completely gave up on the social issues (which I think is the direction they are going). In New York they are talking about lifting the restrictions on 3rd trimester abortions. Can Republicans sit on the sidelines for that?

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.